U.S. Bancorp CEO Davis rips TARP

“I will say this very bluntly: We were told to take it. Not asked, told. ‘You will take it,’ ” Davis said. “It doesn’t matter if you were there on the first night and you were told to sign on the dotted line before you walked out of the office, or whether in the days that followed, you were told to take it.”

“We were told to take it so that we could help Darwin synthesize the weaker banks and acquire those and put them under different leadership,” he said. “We are not even allowed to mention that. … We were supposed to say the TARP money was used for lending.”

“Now they’re punishing you for having the capital,” he said, adding that he refuses to stand by and let his company become “collateral damage” in an attempt to nationalize the banks.